The Phrase ‘Buckle Up!’ Pays Off At Pottstown High

Representatives from Pottstown High School, the Montgomery County Health Department, the Greater Valley Forge Transportation Management Association and Pottstown Police show off the $250 Seat Belt Challenge prize.

POTTSTOWN PA – Pottstown High School has won a $250 prize because its students demonstrated the most improved use of seat belts during a year-long “Seat Belt Challenge” conducted by the Montgomery County Health Department and the Greater Valley Forge Transportation Management Association, school spokesman John Armato announced Friday (June 14, 2013).

The challenge was intended to determine how many students and staff members who drove to school wore seat belts during the 2012-2013 academic year, as monitored in surveys done locally by the Pottstown Police Department. Of six participating high schools – Pottstown, Upper Merion, Spring-Ford, Methacton, Pope John Paul, and Wissahickon – Pottstown had the greatest improvement of seat belt use, rising from 42 percent at the start of the year to 59 percent at the end.

That 17-percent increase “will help save lives and prevent injuries in the future,” Armato noted.

Videos created, edited and produced by Pottstown students Joseph Borders and Richard Couch, and broadcast throughout classrooms during the year, were credited by Principal Stephen Rodriguez with making a difference in seat belt awareness. They helped students and staffers to understand “the lifesaving value of the use of seat belts,” he said.

The $250 award will be used to develop other educational tools promoting seat belt safety, according to Pottstown telecommunications teacher Katie Minger.